Nosco And Novigi Announce Partnership

Nosco and Novigi, a Dutch provider of innovation management solutions and services, have announced a partnership to provide Nosco’s platform and services in the Dutch market.

“We believe Novigi can help us reach interesting Dutch companies and that we can provide them with the tools and resources that directly meet the innovation challenges of their customers”, says Oliver Bernhard, CEO of Nosco.

“We’re very excited to be able to offer the Nosco platform and services to companies in the Netherlands and believe this partnership can support us in implementing industry leading innovation management solutions and approaches”, says Bart Sturkenboom, partner of Novigi.

“With the recent mention, Nosco joins a select group of vendors that have been listed by both Gartner and Forrester as vendors that matter in the innovation management space,” says Oliver Bernhard, CEO of Nosco. “We are, of course, very pleased with this recognition.”

Gartner is a leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner provides technology-related insights to help companies make better decisions in relation to IT investments. The Market Guide series is one of Gartner’s research offerings.

Nosco Raises $600K In Series-A Funding For Us Expansion

March 19 2015, Copenhagen

Venture company joins angel investors to fund expansion of Nosco, a Danish social idea platform, in the US market.

Nosco, a software and consulting company that helps organizations become more innovative, today announced that they have raised $600,000 in Series-A funding for their planned expansion in the US market.

Nosco, creator of the social idea platform of the same name, already has major European customers including Maersk, Danfoss, Volvo, VW and Allianz. In 2014, Nosco established a strategic partnership with US-based InnoCentive and the customer portfolio now includes companies such as Reebok and Dolby.

With the investment, Nosco plans to build its own sales team in New York and increase its focus on the US market. Nosco’s US operation will be hosted by Lemonsqueeze, which helps European companies enter the US market and provides office space, recruitment services, sales assistance, and more.

Alongside the focus on the US market, Nosco has already started to expand in Europe, with a special focus on the German market.

Oliver Bernhard, CEO of Nosco, states: “This is really exciting. We have a really strong product and a great team. Over the past year we’ve got a small taste of the US market and have high expectations for it. So we are really happy with the trust that our investors have shown in our plan.”

In addition to Niord Venture, the investor group includes angel investors Jesper Hart-Hansen (former Manager of Innovation and New Ventures at eBay), Thomas Reenberg (former Partner at PwC Consulting and Nordic Head of IBM Business Consulting), and Rasmus Aaen Madsen (former co-founder and CEO of YouCalc, which was acquired bySuccessFactors, now part of SAP).

Thomas Reenberg says about the investment in Nosco: “Following the financial crisis, many of the world’s leading companies have become significantly more profitable. The cash piles are growing and dividends and share repurchases are historically high. At the same time, executives are searching high and low for attractive investment areas and new business lines to ensure future growth.” He continues: “Nosco has created a unique product for just this ‒ strengthening innovation, be it for new businesses and growth, efficiency improvements and product development, or development of new business models. They have a clear vision and a competent and dynamic leadership team.”

Jesper Hart-Hansen notes: “Nosco has proved they are a vendor to be reckoned with. Over the next 10 years, more and more companies will invest in software for innovation management – the same way they did for HR management, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, and finance and accounting. I think the timing of Nosco's acceleration is good.”

Rasmus Aaen Madsen adds: "It's amazing that they have already been nominated as one of the leading vendors in innovation management by both Forrester and Gartner Group. I believe in the team, and I believe in the market.”

About Nosco

Nosco is a software and consulting firm that helps companies become more innovative.

Nosco is the maker of the Nosco platform, a social platform for ideas. Using the Nosco platform, leaders can post business and innovation challenges, and invite colleagues, customers or partners to share ideas, options or solutions to the challenge. People can post ideas, comment on others' ideas, and vote for ideas that they like.

Both Forrester and Gartner Group have nominated Nosco as one the leading vendors of innovation management solutions.

Nosco was established by Oliver Bernhard and Jesper Müller-Krogstrup in 2006. Since then Sebastian Cadell joined the group of owners. The company currently has 17 employees divided among consulting, development and sales.

About the investors

Niord Venture is owned by, among others, Peter Kisbye. Peter has many years of experience with start-ups. He was previously COO of Kuoni Scandinavia, a travel group, and is currently founder and CEO of Loyalty Solutions, a company that provides customer loyalty solutions to a number of large Danish and international companies.

Jesper Hart-Hansen is a Partner at Wasabi-link.dk and a member of the Executive Capital network. Jesper has co-founded a number of software companies and was most recently Manager of Innovation and New Ventures at eBay Europe.

Thomas Reenberg was previously a Partner at PwC Consulting and the Nordic Head of IBM Business Consulting. His current roles include executive advisor, professional board member and angel investor.

Rasmus Aaen Madsen is co-founder and CEO of Deskwolf, and investor and board member at a number of start-ups. Rasmus was previously co-founder and CEO of YouCalc, which was acquired by SuccessFactors (now part of SAP). Rasmus was also one of the early investors in Zendesk.

Press release: Danish startup speaks “New York”

October 16 2014, Copenhagen

New York is known as the city of opportunities and it has become a dream destination for many companies in Europe. But competition is tough and success requires finding a niche.

The Danish software start up, Nosco, has had a vision of expanding their business to New York – but timing was of the essence. The company has been working on a new social innovation platform for the last two years and is now ready to enter the American market with their new product.

Nosco has a portfolio of clients such as Evonik, Danfoss, VW and Basf, but is now experiencing a good deal of interest from American companies. As a result, Nosco has entered into a partnership with crowdsourcing platform Innocentive. The partnership is another link to the US expansion and it will help Nosco deal with large American companies.

A business expansion to the US can be quite complicated and requires careful consideration and a dose of realism.

That is why the Danish start up, Nosco, has teamed up with Lemon Squeeze, a consultancy agency that has helped a number of Danish companies, such as NPinvestor, Falcon Social and Konstellation, to establish themselves in New York.

Helping European companies in New York has been a success for Lemon Squeeze so far, but there is no magic formula. The consultancy agency rejects nine out of ten companies that contact them, because they assess that the company is not ready to expand to the US.

For Nosco, it is not just a question of getting New York on the business card, but putting every effort into the move. It is important to be able to handle the job and deliver the goods – which is why Lemon Squeeze has chosen to work with the company.

A lot of European companies experience a cultural barrier when they make a sales pitch in the US and this is mainly because the European strategy and approach does not work with Americans. These are the types of challenges Lemon Squeeze will help the Danish company with and both parties are looking forward to the partnership.

A Brand New Nosco

We have spent two years in the basement completely rewriting our idea management platform. Today we finally launch it, after thousands of hours of designing, coding and testing. We are exhausted and happy – and hope you’ll like it. Here’s what’s new:

“New” Name

Or should we say reduced name. We have changed the name to Nosco. Yes, we removed the App from Nosco App. Why? Because Nosco has evolved from a lightweight idea management tool to a full-on innovation management platform. So it was time to say goodbye to the “App”.

Better looking with more power

The first thing you'll notice is that Nosco has a completely new design. We have put a lot of work into making the user experience more visual and inspiring. But the new Nosco isn’t just more beautiful – it’s also faster than ever. We have rebuilt Nosco from the ground up with new, modern, cutting-edge technologies and been able to increase performance tremendously.

More social

We believe making innovation social increases collaboration and makes innovation relevant and engaging. That’s why we have built a ton of social features right into the core of Nosco.

More collaborative

The best ideas get even better when great minds work together on them. That’s why the new Nosco is packed with features to enhance collaboration between people.

More enterprise

Nosco is built for enterprise businesses and we have spent a great deal of time making it easy to manage thousands of ideas and people.

Thank you

The new Nosco has been developed in close collaboration with some of our best clients. We have listened and learned a lot. Thank you all for sharing needs, desires and ideas, and thanks for participating in workshops, beta test and surveys. The input has been invaluable and the result is a Nosco developed in close cooperation with real practitioners.

InnoCentive and Nosco Form Partnership

InnoCentive Inc., the pioneer in crowd sourced innovation and software platforms and Nosco, a software and consulting company specialized in idea management, today announced a strategic partnership that will provide clients with a wider array of innovation solutions.

The need for innovation is greater than ever before and one of the best ways for companies to innovate is through the crowd. Crowdsourced innovation allows a company to engage a large and diverse community of people with different backgrounds, skills and competencies, who offer creative insight, novel ideas to solutions, business challenges or opportunities.

Challenge Driven Innovation from InnoCentive, engages its crowd of more than 300,000 problem solvers from 200 different countries, and Nosco works with the crowd within an organization, namely its employees. InnoCentive has a strong U.S. presence with companies such as AstraZeneca, Cleveland Clinic and NASA on its client list; Nosco has a strong focus on Europe with clients such as BASF, Volvo and Volkswagen.

Together, Nosco and InnoCentive now provide the innovation services and applications needed for effective crowdsourced innovation both within and outside an organization.

“We are impressed with the Idea Management leadership of Nosco and are pleased to add these capabilities to our crowdsourced Challenge Driven Innovation capabilities. We can now provide our clients a full suite of idea generation, idea management and solution generation capabilities,” said Craig Jones, Chairman of the Board and CEO, for InnoCentive.

“With this partnership both Nosco and InnoCentive further strengthen their capabilities to make organizations more innovative. To be a truly innovative organization, we believe you need to engage both people within the organization and experts from outside. This partnership provides our clients with some of the best tools and expertise in the world for engaging people in innovation so they can reach broader and become better and more efficient innovators,” said CEO Oliver Bernhard of Nosco.

About InnoCentive

InnoCentive is the global leader in crowdsourcing innovation solutions from the world’s smartest people who compete to provide ideas and solutions to important business, social, policy, scientific and technical challenges. Our global network of millions of problem solvers, proven challenge methodology and cloud-based technology combine to help our clients transform their economics of innovation through rapid solution delivery and the development of sustainable open innovation programs. For more than a decade, leading organizations such as AARP Foundation, Air Force Research Labs, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cleveland Clinic, Eli Lilly & Company, EMC Corporation, NASA, Nature Publishing Group, Procter & Gamble, Scientific American, Syngenta, The Economist, Thomson Reuters and the U.S. EPA have partnered with InnoCentive to rapidly generate innovative new ideas and solve problems faster, more cost effectively and with less risk than ever before. For more information, visit www.innocentive.com, email: info@innocentive.com, or call 1-855-CROWDNOW (U.S.) or +44 (0) 207 935 0827 (International).

About Nosco

Nosco is a software and consultancy company focused on innovation and idea management. Nosco App is a social platform for ideas, which organizations use to tap into the innovative potential of their workforce, customers and partners. Nosco’s consulting services help clients transform themselves into collaborative and innovative organizations. Nosco’s clients include some of the biggest and most innovative companies in the world, such as Volkswagen, BASF and Reebok. Learn more about Nosco at www.nos.co

The selection of the evaluated vendors in the Wave is based on criteria such as sustained presence in the innovation tool market, notable growth in clients, revenue and employees between 2009 and 2012, and the proven ability to serve large enterprise clients across the globe.

By being featured in the innovation Wave, Nosco is identified as one of the top vendors in the innovation management platform market, and we are obviously very honored by this recognition.

Forrester is a global research and advisory firm ranked 80th on Forbes America’s 200 Best Small Companies (October 2008) and named one of the 100 Fastest-Growing Companies by Fortune Small Business (2007). Among other research-based services, Forrester develops the Forrester Waves, which are different evaluations of vendors in a software, hardware, or services market, and are written for professionals. The Waves aim to identify competing products across the three dimensions of current offerings, strategy, and market presence. This is done by different evaluations such as customer reference calls, vendor surveys, product demos, etc.